PDF document – love it, loathe it

We all love PDF for its versatility – it’s portable, smaller, searchable, easier to view, print, store and share. But when it comes to producing them, we don’t fancy it. Why? Because most PDF tools end up being a cluttered user interface as developers pack features on features, just to be at par with the competitions, while overlooking or forgetting the heuristics and usability aspect of even the basic workflow of a typical user. For instance, for a simple task such as producing a PDF from a document, one needs to start the PDF app, choose the file from disk, define the page size, set security options or restrictions, choose the destination folder, and specify a file name or type in manually – too many steps and effort kind of spoils the experience.

And more importantly, even sophisticated and expensive suite like Adobe Acrobat DC and Foxit Phantom PDF lack support for producing PDF from different document types or formats. In a situation like this, one can rely on ‘PDF printer driver’ where you open that particular document with its associated software application and print it with the ‘PDF driver’. With one or few files, it may do the trick. When you have many of them, multiple steps and more overhead with less productivity. Needless to say, not only the process is time consuming, you will need to have the different software apps installed to work with different document types.

Wouldn’t it be much simpler and easier, if you could just select your files or folder in your Windows Explorer and in a click, produce PDFs without making much fuss on the file formats or types (e.g., images, camera RAWs, office documents, faxes, emails, archived ZIP)?

Instant PDF

So when developing our PDF app, the core focus has been instant PDF production from almost any document type or format with no or very little inputs from the user. In File to PDF, you don’t open the app at all to produce PDF documents. Instead, from the comfort of your Windows Explorer, you right-click the files or folder and click the instant PDF from the context menu. This will produce the PDF documents right in same location, with the same name but with the .pdf extension – without showing any windows or requiring any further input from you.

Did I hear you ask what about Zip file? In other PDF tools, you will have to first extract the files of a Zip file to a folder before processing them. In Contrast, with File to PDF, it will go inside the Zip and produce PDF document from each of the file (contained in the Zip) or for that matter, can even combine all the files of the Zip to one PDF document. It will produce also PDFs from that zip file located within another zip file, which itself could be located in another zip and so on e.g., C.zip located under B.zip, which in turn is located under the parent A.zip. Nicely done!

What about a multi-page TIFF? File to PDF would take into account all the pages inside that single TIFF file and produce a PDF that contains all the pages of the TIFF unlike other tools that only produce PDF from the first page. Have a lot of RAW photo files from your recent expedition and need to produce a portfolio document or preview? With File to PDF, you can produce PDFs directly from these RAW files and skip the time-consuming steps of pre-processing the Photo RAW files to JPEGs (which is one would usually do) – all these irrespective of the vendors (Nikon, Canon, Leica etc) and RAW types (CR2, NEF, PEF, SR2…)

Have a folder with lots of documents, perhaps on a project that you have to submit? With File to PDF, just right-click that folder and click Instant PDF menu in your Windows Explorer and it will produce PDF from each file, with the same filename but with a .pdf extension in the same folder. Get smart and utilize your valuable time and effort to do something productive, rather than processing one file at a time. Hold on, did you mention you have to submit all these via email? No sweat, just right-click the unprocessed files or folder and click ‘Email As PDF’ menu and File to PDF will process all these documents to PDF (if not already) before attaching them as attachments to a new email.

A note though, as of now, this works if Microsoft Outlook is installed in your system and configured with an email account.

So just a click is what all File to PDF need to produce PDFs from your files and folder or email them as PDFs. It can’t get any easier or simpler!

File types and formats

With File to PDF, you simply disregard your concern of file formats or types. It can produce PDF documents from more than 120 file types, including popular office documents such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OpenDocuments, RTF, various types of bitmaps and images, FAX or scanned documents, RAW camera files and even compressed ZIP etc. The complete file types and formats supported are listed here.

If you have stored emails as MSG or EML files in your disk, to produce PDFs from these files, with most PDF tools, the first step (but not the last) will be to open your email MSG or EML file in its Email Application (such as Microsoft Outlook) that created it. And only then, there might be a possibility to create PDFs from the email message. Even then, most of these PDF tools may be unable to convert the attachments (if any) to PDF. In such case, you will be forced to save the attachments to your disk to further process it. Just consider if you have to do it again for tens or hundreds of email files? The time, effort and steps required to accomplish the goal would probably overwhelm any one.

Unlike other PDF tools, File to PDF can take MSG or EML files from your Windows folder and convert to PDF along with its attachments (if any) for easy sharing or archiving. You don’t even need to open the MSG or EML in Microsoft Outlook. What if there is an attachment that is in ZIP format? No, you don’t need to extract the contents at all from the ZIP attachment. No matter how if there are inner ZIP files within the ZIP attachment (e.g., C.zip located under B.zip, which in turn is located under the parent A.zip attachment), File to PDF app will automatically take into account all the files stored in its inner ZIP files (if any) when producing PDF documents from any ZIP attachment. In short, this whole process is seamless to the user and the user can concentrate on what to do with the PDF documents produced.

Combining files to one PDF

Imagine a situation, where your scanner produced individual pages of a document while scanning, or you have multiple documents (not necessarily of the same type or format) that would just work better as a single file. In fact, in typical workplace or business environment, multiple documents naturally belong together, such as quotation, sales order and invoice, or an email and its attachments. Combining such documents to one together makes it easy to see their relationship. File to PDF makes it possible to combine multiple files to one PDF document while forgetting what their types or formats are.

Security features

As with any professional PDF authoring tool, File to PDF also offers security features such as watermark, password protection and permission restrictions to your PDF documents. Adding watermark is a simple way to secure your PDF content. A watermark easily lets viewers identify the status of your PDF content, for instance, as a visual warning to designate your document as confidential or for internal use only. Adding a watermark of your name or brand on publication material not only adds a professional touch but also helps to identify ownership without completely locking the PDF down. More importantly, watermarking each page of your PDF helps protect your intellectual property from being passed off as someone else’s work when it is shared with others.

You can produce PDF document that requires a user to type in a password to open it in PDF reader software. This is usually known as ‘Document Open Password‘ or ‘User Password’. Additionally, with File to PDF, you can lock down your PDF content by setting a permissions password (also known as a master password) and restrict printing, editing and copying content in the PDF. Your intended recipients don’t need a password to open the document (unless a ‘Document Open Password’ or ‘User Password’ is enforced on that PDF). They do need this permissions password (master password) to change the restrictions you have set.

So those were few tricks on its sleeve that can make PDF content production and sharing much easier and your life freer with File to PDF for Windows. And it makes better sense, much easier and simpler too, to produce PDF documents from files and folders from the comfort and ease of Windows Explorer. To learn more, refer to video demonstrations at my YouTube channel.

Before you got to this page, chances are, you were just finishing sending a quote to your customer on your Windows PC, or reading an e-book on your Kindle, or tallying debit/credit transactions from your bank e-statements in Mac, or paying off utility e-bills from your smartphone, or preparing a meeting agenda for your team on your tablet or just referring to the user manual of your brand new smart TV. What not so obvious in all these activities is the document type used across all these devices – Portable Document Format or just what we popularly refer to as PDF. Today, it is hard to imagine the new digital office work-space without PDF file format, the choice for storing and sending all kinds of electronic documents – from product presentations and company newsletters, to legal contracts and financial reports.

Starting Office 2007, Microsoft had provided a free add-on known as ‘Save As PDF & XPS’ for saving Word, Excel, PowerPoint documents to PDF and XPS documents (XPS format being Microsoft’s alternative to PDF, but never gained much traction). With Office 2010 release, saving to PDF documents was natively supported in Word, Excel, PowerPoint but not in Microsoft Outlook. This mean you were unable to save emails and their attachments to PDF documents. And even to this day, this continues to be the state of affairs with the latest Office 2016. The workaround is, to make use of 3rd party PDF visual print drivers to output to PDF, but you don’t have much control over output (for instance, it cannot print the attachments that came with the email, nor it can generate a single, merged PDF file containing multiple emails and attachments). Additionally, Adobe Acrobat provides a plugin extension for Outlook email client to save emails to PDF. But it’s quite expensive and you will need to purchase or subscribe to the whole Acrobat software eco-system. Of course there are quite a few PDF Outlook add-ins from 3rd parties that can output emails to PDF, but is not perfect. Or is it? Read on.

‘Email to PDF’ add-in installed in your system equips Microsoft Outlook application to

Save emails along with their attachments to PDF, either as a single merged file (containing both email and attachments), or to separate PDF files, each for the attachment and one for email

Combine multiple emails and their attachments to a single PDF file

Forward existing emails and their attachments as PDF files to other recipients

Convert non-PDF attachments to PDF before sending a new email, reply or meeting request.

Add emails and attachments to an existing PDF file (excellent to maintain a single PDF file or e-book, that contains a record of emails on similar topic)

Automate the PDF output process where it generates PDFs from incoming emails and their attachments – freeing you from performing repetitive tasks (say, for archiving emails/attachments for company record keeping)

When ‘Email to PDF’ add-in encounters any of the following document formats in the email attachments, it automatically converts to PDF:

These ability to save emails and convert attachments to PDF in Outlook has many benefits:

All PDF output files generated from Outlook using ‘Email to PDF’ add-in is searchable with keywords.

When sending or replying to emails with non-PDF attachments, you no longer need to be concerned if the recipients have the right apps to view the different attachments types. For instance, you send an email with an expense report as attachments (in excel and PDF formats) to your HR manager, who is on a tour. If the manager’s tablet or smartphone don’t have excel app, he or she can still view the PDF attachment.

Thank to high rate of compression, PDF format drastically reduces document size while preserving the document quality. Smaller file size significantly reduces costly bandwidth and storage issues on Exchange or file server. Converting attachments and embedded images to a PDF reduces document size significantly, which adds up to real savings in expensive email server storage and bandwidth congestion. It also means significant time being saved in retrieving emails from the server.

Efficient email retention policy – PDF being a self-contained and highly compressed medium that effectively manages images, vectors and text in a single file, it makes for an ideal format from which to base archiving and record keeping.

Saves you precious time and effort from having to undergo multiple actions and switching between multiple apps to create or convert PDF from your existing Word/Excel documents and attach back to email in Outlook.

Turning your emails and attachments into PDFs makes them portable, smaller, searchable and generally easier to view, print, store and share, independent of application software, hardware and operating systems. This versatility makes PDF the most usable and suitable format for all types of business presentations.

Video Demonstration: Generating PDF from emails and attachments from an email

‘Email to PDF for Outlook’ is available in 16 major languages: English, Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish. You can avail a fully functional trial of 30 days – download it here. If you represent an educational institutions or universities, get it for free by applying for an academic license here.

With presence on about 500 million computer systems, Microsoft Outlook is by far the most widely used email application in the world. It is more so entrenched in the business community, where it is not only used for email exchange, but also as a personal organizer able to handle just about everything from your email to your calendar and easily transfer tasks, contacts, and more. In a nutshell, Microsoft Outlook enjoys an enormous popularity.

However, being the most popular email application does not necessarily mean it is perfect. In fact, is far from it. One of the glaring omissions is the feature to extract and export emails from Outlook data store to document formats such as Adobe PDF, even Microsoft own proprietary XPS and Word document formats.

PDF or Portable Document Format is an industry standard for document exchange and archiving. In other term, it is an electronic replacement for paper. Converting emails to PDF can serve many purposes. First, PDF format preserves the source file information such as layout, styles and format of the email. Second, PDF exists in compressed form that reduces the size of the file significantly, making it simple to distribute by e-mail or post on a website. This also makes it an ideal to archive and backup emails so that you have a record of your information in a format that can be easily opened in the future. Additionally, because of archiving, mailbox size can be maintained at reduced level. Third, it is very easy to share with other users because of its size and portability. Fourth, PDF files are viewable and printable on virtually any platform, including Windows, Mac OS, UNIX, Linux and mobile platforms such as iPhone, iPad, Android etc.

Because of the popularity of PDF, Microsoft started supporting it in Office 2007 via a special ‘Save as PDF and XPS’ add-in, available as a separate download. With SP2, PDF and XPS support is natively inbuilt into the Office suite. So, now you can easily save your Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents to PDF natively. Unfortunately, Microsoft chooses to leave support for PDF/XPS out of its Outlook application. Whether that was deliberate or limitation in PDF licensing term, we don’t know for sure. But what we do know is the devoid of PDF and XPS export feature in Outlook is a big limitation. So, as usual, most of us has to either rely on Adobe Acrobat Outlook plug-in (which means, you will have to buy it and yes, it costs a lot too, $299 for a personal license for the standard edition!) or, make use of a PDF printer driver, to generate PDF document that is not searchable and contents that is not easy to recover or exported to another format. Some even resort to copy-paste of the content of the web page to Microsoft Word and convert to PDF/XPS document, albeit in a crude fashion.

For these reasons, a year back, in an attempt to bridge the gap, I wrote a VBA, that puts a button in the mail inspector window in Outlook, clicking which would feed the HTML version of the email item to Microsoft Word application through command line execution, and convert it into a PDF document. What started as a simple script to meet my own requirement for document generation from emails, has now evolved into a full-fledged commercial add-in application for Microsoft Outlook. It really is a lot nicer. It has a lot of conveniences that make it easy to use, encapsulating all the complex and dirty processes within the familiar Outlook toolbar and ribbon user interface. But in the end it still does that same core function that got it started – it generates PDF, XPS, word documents and web archived pages from any items in Outlook (be it emails, appointments or tasks), with a single click or on its own through automation. These are all achieved, by leveraging your existing investment in Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 suite. There is no requirement to install a PDF printer driver or a third party library or Adobe Acrobat application.

In its new avatar, Document Exporter is a lot more than just being a PDF converter. Once you convert an email to PDF or other document format, generated PDF files of the email and attachments can be named with the metadata information contained in the email item itself, such as date, sender, receiver, subject, etc. This way you don’t even need to input and key in the name of the document.

Document Exporter can also convert the underlying attachments of the email to PDF. You have the choice to output each individual attachment to a separate PDF file, or merge all attachments into a single PDF file where each attachment is joined to one another, or merge the email along with the attachments to a single PDF file such that, each attachment is joined and appended to the email PDF. However, the support for converting attachment to PDF depends on the file format of the attachment. Most of the Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Web or simply plain text file formats are supported. Here is a list of different file formats supported for converting to PDF: docx, docm, doc, dot, dotx, dot, htm, html, mht, mhtl, rtf, txt, odt, wpd, wps, xl, xlsx, xlsm, xlsb, xlam, xltx, xltm, xls, xlt, xla, xlm, xlw, odc, uxdc, ods, csv, prn, pptx, ppt, pptm, ppsx, pps, ppsm, potx, pot, potm, odp, bmp, gif, png, jpg, jpeg, tif, tiff, pcx, psd

One unique feature of Document Exporter that sets it apart from other PDF converter tool for Outlook is in its support to export emails to other popular document formats such as Microsoft own, XPS (*.xps) and Word Documents (*.docx, *.doc), Rich Text (*.rtf), Open Document (*.odt) and Web archive (*.mht). There are five ways of generating PDF and other document formats from Outlook items:

Convert individual Outlook item

Batch convert multiple Outlook items

Append Outlook items to an existing PDF file

Merge multiple Outlook items into one file

Automatically convert new incoming emails

One recent feature addition is the real-time generation of PDF or other document formats from incoming emails. This works by setting Document Exporter add-in to monitor an Outlook folder or mailbox, for new emails. So, when a new incoming email hits the folder or mailbox, Document Exporter automatically processes it to generate PDF or other documents, without any intervention from the user. Now, you can easily maintain a parallel copy or backup of your current Outlook items.

You can also opt to maintain a single PDF file for an Outlook folder or mailbox, such that every new Outlook item received or added to the folder or mailbox will be automatically appended over this single PDF file, containing iteration of pages just like an e-book. This entire process will appear seamless to the user, and you will have a PDF file that has the latest update of your Outlook folder or mailbox.

Finally, you have complete control over the PDF document generation through the Output settings panel. You can customize the default file naming scheme by choosing your own metadata fields, specify the attachments output behavior, choose single or multiple PDF merge options and modify the page setup and layout etc.

The latest release of Document Exporter add-in is version 6 and works with Outlook 2007 and 2010 (32 bit). I have also composed a 15 minutes video demonstration on its capabilities on Outlook 2010, which is now available on the product website. If you have any opinions, feedback or questions on this product, I’d love to hear from you. You can contact me at bahrur dot ipham at assistmyteam dot net.

About

Bahrur Rahman is Founder of AssistMyTeam, a technology venture that helps small and medium businesses attain efficiency and reap maximum benefits and value out of their investment in Microsoft. bahrurBlog provides an insight into his strategy, vision for AssistMyTeam as well as general tips and solutions to overcome the challenges and pitfalls SMB experienced when integrating business processes with Microsoft ecosystems - Office, Exchange and SharePoint.